砂漠のJeffire

Jeffirean Stories

Friday, January 28, 2005

I wrote topics I wanted to blog on my exercise book. The first one is about work. Just some interesting stuff I learnt at work.

First, let me ask you a question. Do you know how budget airlines sell their tickets? They begin from the cheapest and so the prices goes up like ladders...Usually they won't entertain cancellations and thus refunds aren't allowed. If you decide to change your flight then you may have to pay some penalty fee.

There is this Auntie S**** at work who was very good at dealing with unreasonable customers. She was actually from the beauty industry and told me lotsa dark stuff about the industry..heh. BGS fodder! Anyway there was this very irritating customer who dialled a few days ago and got a pricing and then called again after thinking through her options for a booking. Here's an excerpt from the conversation

Customer: "I thought that day one of your colleagues gave me this price? How come now so expensive?"

Aunt S: "The cheap tickets for this flight has all been snapped up. If you bought earlier, you would have gotten them at that price too. So do you want to confirm your booking?"

Customer: "Hey, but how can you quote me this price now! It's just only 2 days and it has risen so much!"

Aunt S: "If you don't like this price, why don't you try another flight?"

Customer: "I want to go on this flight....blah blah blah" (damn irritating long winded person)

Aunt S: "Ok, let me tell you something. If today you bought a shirt at Metro, then tomorrow Metro announces a 50% off storewide, can you take the shirt back for a refund of 50%? Cannot right? It's the same mah, like I tell you the price is like that today, another few days later the price surely will go up again. If you don't buy now it will be more expensive soon."

And so the customer shut up and paid for the flight.

The lesson here is not about budget airlines or being kiasu to buy cheap tickets! The lesson here is that if you are Metro's manager, be sure not to put discounts on existing unsaleable products! Bundle it with some saleable stuff and sell it as if a discount has been given! :p

Oh well, how can a business student not resist thinking about marketing policies? Hahahaha..

The second thing I wanted to blog was about the dream I had this morning. I certainly hope Dan will see this...if not, then I am gonna print it and post it to him...

Anyway, there are 2 segments to the dream. One before my phone's alarm rang, and the other after.

The first one was at some place that looked like school. Can only recall the white styrofoam ceilings and that there was this flat screen panel that looked pretty stylo.. silver coloured..unfortunately, I was quarrelling with Dan over an issue regarding some project. And he was like telling me what I need to do, what I have to do and his gesturing was pretty hysterical, like some angry man... I actually wanted to slap him but couldn't because of fear of damaging the panel..

then the phone rang.

Deciding that I was damn tired after all the IVP so I went to bed again.

The second dream began in some old old school building that had pillars similar to the ones in Catholic High.. milk colours.. but the setting looked pretty like NUS too...this time I saw that he was sitting at one corner and looked like waiting for somebody. So I went forward and gestured if he wanted to go play table tennis with me later, but he shook his head. Then suddenly he was like crying and banging the table, so I was like trying to grab him to calm down and then he suddenly disappeared by jumping over the wall. I reached out to grab him but didn't see him so I jumped as well. Then I went to the library and saw my SMU friends and they were telling me that our projects were still stuck in the library rooms. I couldn't recognise any of them but the setting now looked like the SMU library... I ignored them and ran up the stairs of the library but Dan wasn't in sight.. so I sat down at the computer table and type in some words.. then the screen said "Guilty" and I was like shocked so much that then I woke up.

As usual, after every interesting dream/nightmare, I will be analysing them. It's just so happened that I decided to write all the details I could remember in the exercise book, which is what you can see above.

My analysis? Projects, projects and projects are hounding me! The word 'Guilty' came from the slide I was preparing yesterday for the Honda corruption case and perhaps I have been worrying about Dan since that faithful day... I have been harbouring hopes that he would be able to join us at SMU too..which is why a mix up of settings...and of course the library computers and the LCD panels are what I always see because I don't have a laptop and will always be rushing all sorts of work, projects, SCS stuff, printing notes and emailing people....blah...

Oh well, BGS is damn scary...my teammates are pretty confident that we can get things done in one day.. wonder where their confidence come from? And to think that we have to decorate the room, act, and video cam for the project...makes me worry.

January is coming to an end soon. I hope I will see April early! Unfortunately, I will definitely miss the girls in school...so much eye candy. Haha.

Okie, hope to see Dan like normal again and of course one day let's hope he joins SMU and become a totally new person...like I did. Am I? I think so.

Regards
Jeffire

Acknowledged my existence at
9:31 PM